Walker did not consider further what he must do. He went out from his body as a shade, tracking the wires that fed into it back to their source. Penetrating metal, glass, and stone as if they were air, he sped through the walls of the keep, a silent and invisible presence. He stayed alert for Antrax all the while, wanting to keep it from that room where his body lay, from examining him too closely, from finding out the truth. He surged down conduits and through clusters of wires and metal pieces that conducted electricity and thought, power garnered from magic and converted to use. He seethed at the knowledge of what had been done to the men and women who had been lured there, but stayed focused on what was needed to stop it from happening again.
He found the relays for the security system quickly enough. Eyes of glass watched from ceilings all through the safehold, mechanical orbs that let Antrax view everything. But of what use were they? Antrax was a machine; it did not need eyes. The eyes, Walker realized with a start, were for the humans who had once controlled Antrax. They served no other purpose now. Antrax would use a more sophisticated system-one of touch and feel and sound and perhaps body heat. Only magic would thwart it, and perhaps not all magic at that.
Where did Antrax dwell within this vast complex? Where did all the information feed?
He tracked it for a time, down lines and through chambers, along corridors and around corners. But one set of relays led to another. One bank of machines was tied to a second. Lines of power opened into new lines, and there was no end of them. Nothing to tell him where to find the start and finish of things.
He tried quieting himself and tracking Antrax by feel. It was not difficult to do. But once again, there seemed to be no start or finish. Antrax was vast and sprawling. It was everywhere at once, all about and seeping through, endless and immutable. Antrax was the safe-hold of Castledown; spread in equal parts throughout, there was no part of the keep that it did not inhabit. It warded everything at once. Walker did not waver from his goal. He had come too far to give up. There was too much at stake and no one else who could do what was needed. Not even . . .
He hesitated. The words were bitter with realities he did not want to face.
Yet what choice did he have?
He finished the sentence in a rush. Not even her.
He must change his thinking, he acknowledged in what, for some, might have been considered an admission of defeat. But Druids dealt with neither victory nor defeat, but with reality and truth. What was fated could not be denigrated or altered by imposition of moral judgment. It was not his mandate. Druids served a higher cause, the preservation and advancement of Mankind and the Races. The Great Wars had reduced civilization to ruins and humans to animals. That must not happen again. The Druid Council had been formed in the time of Galaphile to see that it could not, and every Druid since had worked in furtherance of that end.
But what could he accomplish in the time that remained to him? There, in that nightmarish place, with only a few to stand beside him, with so much at stake? What, that would give life to the bargain he had struck with Allardon Elessedil all those months ago?
Time was slipping away, time he could not afford to waste. He was taking the wrong approach to the business, he decided. His search for answers was leading him in the wrong direction. It was not Antrax that had brought him to Castledown in the first place. Antrax was a secondary concern. It was the treasure Antrax warded that mattered, that could change everything.
He must look for the books of magic.
Pervasive in presence and reach, Antrax sprawled in contented solitude across the vast complex of its underground kingdom, monitoring its sensors and readouts, fulfilling functions its creators had programmed. With the blind certainty of artificial intelligence, it relied on the reassurance of constant input and an unchanging environment. For not quite three thousand years, it had maintained its world through its preassigned functions and unswerving vigilance. Any possibility of disruption brought a swift response.